More Americans applied for refugee status in Canada in the first half of 2025 than in all of 2024, and more than in any full year since 2019, according to data published on Thursday by Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board.
Their share of total refugee claims - 245 of about 55,000 - is small and Canada’s acceptance of U.S. refugee claims has historically been low. Asylum-seekers from other countries crossing the land border from the U.S. are sent back under a bilateral agreement with the reasoning that they should apply for asylum in the first “safe” country they arrived in.
Last year 204 people filed refugee claims in Canada with the United States as their country of alleged persecution. Claims from the U.S. also rose during the first Trump administration.
It says in the article that the number of American requests are still quite low, and are generally denied anyway. They have to prove that nowhere in the US is safe for them, and the high level position of Canada, for the time being, is that the US is not an unsafe country (otherwise they couldn’t defer other refugees here).